In an alternate world

Jo runs into teddy
Late in life

windy melancholia

when the wind blows so hard
and the weather grows so gloomy
your heart becomes strange and lonely

and that is when you can sing these songs

- hakpare mundhum

wise, ancient, fore fathers and mothers
who know exactly how
everything on this earth affected us
and who had the wisdom to pass it on

before this era
where we only know what we feel
when we are told so by corporations

Menstruation

If on my dignity
my religion makes war
the patriarchy makes war
unseen but heard
crowds make war

i fight them all

i alone am sufficient
to take them all, at once

and what do i do if
on my dignity
my mother makes war

and the crowds will tell me
it is women who are women's
own worst enemy

i will turn to them and shout
but patriarchy makes fools
of women, all the time
no, she isn't my enemy
she is doing
what she thinks
is best for me

i will say she too
is a product of the patriarchy
she only tells me
what she learnt
what she holds sacred

and thus in one stroke
i will undermine
her entire personhood
her lifelong agency

So Self sufficient

Because
So completely reliant
On Each othef

To touch the desk

What Do you Do when
There is Nothing you Can do
And yet There is enough energy in you
To move mountains

Do something you must
Or you Will go crazy

So Maybe you say to yourself
I wIll touch every inch of This desk
Every corner, every cervice
That eludes normal Human fingers
Must be touched

And This is all arbitrary
U may want to touch the desk
And someone else may
Want to draw Everything With scales
And make Sure everything
Measures correctly
Some other people, sadly
Eat and eat and all they do is eat

There is No reason why
You choose one thing
And someone else
Chooses another
Maybe it's all about
What you have around you

Or Maybe It's about
How intensely you feel
How intensely you want to control
When you See that
Nothing in the world
Is in your control
Nothing you Do
Makes any difference
And all you have is
Yourself, your body

Since Nothing else
Responds to you
You turn to the One thing
That is in your control
Do things
Be hurt

Tell yourself
It must be done

Or else

There is No or else

It must be done

The desk must be touched
In all its corners and crevices

Of coincindences

Maybe We Wish for something
And look for coincindences
Search for meaning
In Random occurences
Try to justify our belief
That This was meant to be
 

When the universe is Just being
Its usual Random self

Or maybe,
As Sherlock said
The universe is rarely
So lazy
And in Its industriousness
Puts some meaning into
Everything it does,
After all

casual

I don't like the world of casual relationships,
she said
I feel that today's generation is focused on
very shallow, transitory things, she said

her strange, vehement pronouncements

lead me to that time of my life

when i remember feeling the same, 

and expressing it just as vehemently, if not more

and i start wondering 

what sorts of layers of socialization

lead you to that viewpoint

from where you dislike something

natural and intrinsic to human life

one reason could be 

they really dislike intimacy without emotions

but that still doesn't mean you can judge other people

for going for things you don't like

just because you don't like them

another reason could be that
it is not happening in your life

and she would never admit that that is the reason

nor would i, for that matter, when I was her age

and i would be the last person to admit

that i perhaps envied 

the freedom of people

 who seemed to live

lives more free

more fulfilled

more beloved

while i had nothing but

high moral ground

   

but after a while even the ground shifts

when you realise that life is not so clear cut and easy

and that situations have complications

 and that each relationship 

has its own moral universe

and the final reason could be

that if you admit 

you are in any way interested in sexuality

it would open up pitfall upon pitfall

of characterization

of where you stand in society

of what kind of person you are

you know of course that there is no avoiding it

love, relationship, marriage, sex, etc

so then you go for the socially accepted models 

of "meaningful" relationships

with a long history of idealised romances

that places you in the category of a good person

and it leaves you wondering

when these pedestals have fallen from your eyse

it leaves you wondering

who you are, or who you would be

without these idealised ideas 

it's not nice to judge people
and think they are conservative
based on whether or not they are
in these casual relationships, she said
you can be progressive and liberal
in every other way without getting into
morally ambiguous territory

sure i agree it's not nice to be judged

as being conservative

when you are only being true to yourself

but at the same time

it's not nice to judge other people's 

moral ambiguity vis-a-vis your own

for lack of better words, conservative-ness

 

so there comes that asexuality

that is not just an honest interest

in everything that is not sexual 

but also a resentment with 

the world's constant focus on intimacy

as if it was the only thing that mattered

and as if you are the only own

missing out from this secret society

before the realisation

that indeed it is the one thing that keeps going

before the realisation of 

what your denial is doing to you

you might say

let's talk about food, education, agriculture

father mother brother sister social duties

with the same passion that we talk about love 

i get so much joy and enrichment from books,
she said

some people have the luxury to think

this will suffice
oh, young people!

denial

layers upon layers
and layers of desires

the layers all created
to hide and distance
what you actually want

remove a layer
and think you are closer
to acknowledging
what you really want

but then there is another layer
you need to get through
and another, and another

and you never admit
even to yourself
what is it that drives you
what is that your
soul moves around

satwik

she destroyed the thrones of gold that the old houses used to sit on,
and chose for herself a simple black ebony bench as a throne

in doing so she thought she was eschewing the extravaganza
that comes with royalty and snobbishness
and going for simplicity closer to her people
but she ignored that simplicity had its own traps
and an infatuation with it was as dangerous
as any obsession with luxury

- GRRM

why do we not see the renunciates
as having just another infatuation, obsession

instead why do we put a high value on purity

that messes up young minds and thoughts
and you start thinking and questioning
your own (non renunciate) behaviour
even though it is natural

the balance of viewing both extremes as undesirable
is somehow lost in translation

at the end of the day,
isn't all kind of infatuations the same
if it makes you behave in similar ways

सूर्यमुखी

सूर्यमुखीले सूर्यलाई  पर्खेझैं
निकैबेरदेखि पर्खिरहेछु
म तिमीलाई

सूर्यमुखीले सूर्यलाई पछ्याए झैं

जब म तिमीलाई देख्छु
म तिमीलाई मात्रै हेरिरहन्छु
तिमी अगाडि छैनौ भने
तिम्रो आवाज जता सुन्छु
त्यतै हेरिरहन्छु

हेर्न खोज्छु तिम्रो मुहार
चिन्न खोज्छु तिम्रा भावना

थाहा पाउन खोज्छु म
तिमी मुस्काइरहँदा तिम्रो 
निधार खुम्चिएको छ कि छैन
तिम्रो मुस्कान तिम्रो आँखासम्म
पुगेको छ कि छैन

तिमी मिठो स्वरमा बोलिरहँदा
तिम्रो स्वर अलि धेरै नै
मिठो त भएको छैन
तिमी तिम्रो अगाडिको
मानिसलाई नै हेर्दै छौ
वा तिम्रा नजर यता त्यता
दौडिरहेका छन्
कि आफैंभित्र
समेटिइरहेका छन्

हो सूर्यमुखीले सूर्यलाइ पछ्याए झैं
म चाहन्छु मात्र तिम्रो मुहार हेर्न

हो चन्द्रमाले पृथ्वीलाई घुमेझैं
म घुम्छु तिम्रै वरीपरी
चाहे तिमी जुनसुकै सूर्यको
परिक्रमा गर

जब कुनै साँझ
तिमी आउँछौ र मेरो जीवन
न्यानो बनाइदिन्छौ
थाहा हुन्छ मलाई
जीवनमा म खुशी हुन
मलाई अर्थोक केही चाहिँदैन

चाहिन्छ मात्र मेरो आत्मामा
तिम्रो न्यानो स्पर्श

तर मेरो सारा खुशी
तिम्रो सबथोक पनि त होइन

र तिमीलाई बाँधेर राखेर
 तिम्रो खुशिी खोस्न पनि त म चाहन्न

देख्छु तिमीलाई
तिमी खुशी छौ म बिना
र म चाहन्छु तिम्रो खुशी
आफ्नो भन्दा पनि बढी

जान दिन्छु तिमीलाई
तिमी खोज आफ्नो खुशी

तर जाँदाजाँदै तिमी त
धेरै टाढा गएछौ

तिमीले बोलाउँदा
मैले नसुन्ने ठाउँमा
मैले हेर्दा तिम्रा भावहरु
नचिन्ने ठाउँमा

miss goody two shoes

Why don't they understand man, I am an adult, she said. I need my space, I need my time, she said. If I am late sometimes,why so much drama?
Think of it this way, he said, they are just concerned for your safety, he said.
Oh no, she rolled her eyes. They wouldn't do that you, even though they are just as concerned for your safety. With daughters they are just worried that she is sleeping around.
And do you, he asked.
Well by this time they know that I am a good girl, nothing like that is going to happen, but still why treat me like a teenager high on hormones?
But do you? he repeated.
Sure I do, she said. But they don't know that.

deep in thought

intolerant of banalities

Why Do words not suffice

To unravel the knots
That words make?
- G

the spring

the planets may not
have turned around

but she has

let them fling
one meteor after another

she is afraid no more

the long distance lover

So many years of separation
interspersed with small glimpses
small promises of deep love

he would call for example,
from his favourite place
just to say her name

when they met for the first time,
he gave her earrings
from that same favourite place
bought right after he called
to whisper and then shout
her name into the phone

now that they were together,
she felt,
all the distances were gone
they did not need to choose
little moments to shout and whisper
they could talk to each other anytime,
normally

this place is so special to me,
he said
i remember the time when
we talked to each other from here
now I's going to come here every year
in that memory

oh no, she said
we need to go to new places every year

oh no,
he would say
i would not like that
to me, visiting special places
is so much more important

sigh, she said
why don't we talk about it
in more detail in the weekend?
it's your day off and mine too

but but, he said
i'm going to the church that day
walking three hours and back
to pray that we are always together

i would rather you talk to me,
she said
this time to herself
because she did not want to
interfere with something
so sacred to him

but she wrote to him all day
everything that came to her mind
it was sitting there in the chat window
that if it all was put together
could be an entire novel

and she waited
for when he would come back
and read and they could talk about it all

but in the evening he said
hey dear im so tired
and i cried all day too,
on the way and back
so i'm just gonna sleep now

and she wondered
what happened to her novels sitting there

the next morning she did ask
if he had time to read
everything she poured out
and if they could talk now

oh no darling, he said
im late for work
but you do know that i start the day
by looking at your photo?

i would rather you say hi to me
the real me
instead of an old photo of me
this time she said it out loud
but he was long gone

and so on for months
every time she tried to talk
he would tell her how important she was
to his mind, to his memory
but had no time to listen
to what kind of day she had

they had lived apart for so long
that he had fallen more and more in love
with the image of her
and the real her had become
less and less important to him

it was not important to him
what she thought and felt today
it was enough for him
to think and remember what she was
when he fell for her

and she tried so often to tell him
that maybe she was not that person anymore
and that perhaps it's better for him to know
what she thinks and likes now
but it really had no meaning for him

he could go by for days, weeks
without talking

all the while as thoughts
built up in her
like steam in a pressure cooker
which she waited to release with him

but he could still come back and say
only a photo of you in my phone
kept me going
and now i have to leave
lalalala  bye

one fine day she said
hey I cannot do this anymore
either you talk to me
or we finish

oh no my darling, he said
you know how important you are to me?
I even thanked you in my
acknowledgements for my masters thesis!

the vow

not that it bothered her in any way
or stopped her from doing anything

but it prevented her from
thinking, wishing
praying, submitting
to the will of the world
from crying, from releasing

ultimately it ended up
damming her up

when she could
not acknowledge
even to herself
how desparate she was,
for some succor

Demisexual dilemmas

Wondering whether
her ideas about intimacy
even made sense

when she insists that
all sexual needs are
emotional needs,
at the end of the day
and even when you think
they are not
it's all about your state of mind
being happy

and not accepting this
and only seeking to satisfy
your sexual needs
is what makes you unhappy

because it's so much more difficult
to engage fully
with every sexual encounter
you learn to compartmentalize
and it's so much easier
to just bang
and pretend like it didn't affect you
to not think about how it affects you

She was all about not dismissing
flings and one night stands
as long as there's a
emotional connection

Is that even a possibility?
Or, if it is, then what is the point
of having a short term fling?
isn't the whole point of a fling
to go do your thing
without any strings attached

very confusing, to be sure
unless you think that there are people
who cannot form attractions
without deep emotional connections

and no matter how short,
it better be real
and even if it short
does not mean it is not real
as long there is true connection

(and that makes it clear why
some things worked
and others didn't)

so much to hold on to
could be, possibly
romanticized ideas
so much baggage, apparently
that holds you back when
you have no time
or maybe not the right person
for the emotional connections

and people who
compartmentalise
their feelings
seem to be unbothered
by all this baggage
and seem to have everything
they could want and need
in separate compartments

and then there is she who
holds on to these ideas
maybe childish,
but she don't want to grow up, no

is it too romantic to ask for
a true connection
to be extremely hurt by cheating
to not react with a meh
and go back to your life
as if nothing happened
when disaster strikes your soul

she wonders how that happens
and why anyone would want to
be in that relationship in the first place
if nothing touches you,
nothing hurts you
and you can carry on with your life
as if nothing happened
even after apocalypose

she would rather not go there
she would rather hold on to her ideas
even if the world of tinder
makes it so much more difficult
to hold on to

even though it seems almost impossible

at the end of the day
it is the light of Earendil
that guides you out of your darkest times
and that is worth passing on
compartmentalising for

Heathcliff

If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger

- Emily Bronte

Pensieve

A refuge from the sharp thorns
Waiting for her at every corner
Of the world
From the burning coals
That lay before her feet

He was peace,
A gently rolling ocean
He was a Deep well
That absorbed her furies
And bitterness alike

He Would have layed
Her demons to rest

And that, too,
Would not be enough for her

She needed to watch
Her demons dancing

So She could create them anew
Only that way could
She exorcise them

He
Would and should
Be enough for anyone
Except for artists
Who need their agitation

(No rest for the wicked)

Hiraeth in Karnali

Not that I had never travelled with roosters, but it had been many years since I was confronted by the crow of one in a bus. I was at the bus stop of Surkhet, a town in Southern Nepal, and the bus was going to Karnali, a remote northern region nestled below the Himalayas. I had heard of Karnali as a faraway, inaccessible place that took months to travel to. But recent constructions had changed all that, and now a bus could take me there in 1.5 days. I took a deep breath and climbed in.

I gently brushed the rooster aside from my seat, and sat down next to a friendly looking woman. I told her I was eager to see all the sights I could.

“You are on the wrong side, the river view is on the other side,” she said. Then she leaned across me to the man on the other side. “Oh hey, baini here is going to Karnali for the first time. She MUST see the sights. You exchange seats with us!”

No ‘please’ there, but the man immediately agreed, (“Oh yes, of course she must see the sights!”) and shifted to our seat, complete with rooster!

The bus passed by antique villages, a shimmering green Karnali river, and ruins of old palaces, and I did not even blink. I feasted my eyes on the delights that and novelties that did not exist in the capital city anymore, where I lived. Verdant green forests, layers and layers of terrace fields glowing with freshly planted rice. Somehow, the leaves seemed greener here and the skies bluer. The mud houses looked pretty as a picture, but I also knew that life in these houses could not be so pretty.

When night fell the bus stopped at a remote hilltop, and the driver told us to find lodgings nearby. I followed a hotelier who had come looking for customers, and ended up at what seemed like a big ruin: bare, empty rooms, only pillars and no walls on the upper floors, and an eerie cold peculiar to graveyards. Turns out all these things also applied to under-construction houses that hadn’t been warmed by a single summer.

The hotelier was apologetic as he took me to a room that oozed coldness from bare cement walls. A single, ramshackle bed lay in the room, and nothing else. “I am sorry but we have not had the time to fit a door into this room. Please close the flat door instead!” I was thankful that at least the window panes were in place, or I would have died of cold.

I seemed to have caught Karnali in the midst of a transformation, as it was leaving its traditional lifestyle behind and adjusting to modernity. This phenomenon was to define my trip.

Gumgadhi was one such town, with wi-fi hotels and wooden sheds with grass roofs standing side by side. As a bus revved nearby, horses and mules grazed lazily, ready to take goods and people to remoter locations.

Not just Karnali’s town, but its people too were in the midst of a transformation. As I walked into Gumgadhi, many women come up to my bus, and later went back with sacks of cement on their backs. The women were dressed in colorful fariya and blouses, and wore traditional silver necklaces made of coins was rarely seen in the rest of Nepal.

As I walked around town, the same women were gathered under the eaves of a house, smoking and sheltering from the rain. They seemed to be laughing at me.

“Are you laughing at me?” I asked.

“We were just wishing we could go around in pants like you,” one of them, in her 30s by the looks, giggled. She was wearing sneakers under her traditional fariya choli and company mala.

“Why don’t you?” I giggled back.

“My husband will beat me up when he comes back from the field!” I couldn’t figure out if she was being serious. I decided she was being sarcastic.

“If you have your own fields, why do you work as labourers, carrying sacks of cement?”

“Oh that’s just to pay for the husband’s drinks…” she sighed. “Husbands these days are totally worthless, aren’t they?” This time I decided she must be serious.

As I walked away, she began singing it out. Her voice seemed to ring around the entire valley, rising and falling with her emotions.

Oh poor one

My heart sways wildly

For my own destiny is faulty

Goosebumps rose on my skin as other women joined her. Here, everyone was a superstar. Because they did not have televisions. They did not have cinema halls. They were not yet told what they felt. So they expressed what they really felt, when they felt.

Indeed the people of Karnali held their emotions very dear, and their stories. Everywhere I went, I found stories that made the dreamy landscape come alive. In Sinja valley especially, with a lazy meandering Karnali river going through miles and miles of rice fields, people told stories of kings and the treasures they left behind.

“My neighbor was digging his fields to plant them, and found a big box full of treasures, old metal utensils!” said one person.  

“This is where the mythical princes Pandavas lived,” said another, pointing to the ruins of a palace. Then she pointed to a cave: “and that is where they hid when their enemies pursued them.”

The Pandavas are characters of Mahabharata, a Hindu myth beloved all over South Asia, but nowhere else did they seem so alive. People pointed at sets of five stone pillars that seemed to lie around in every field, and said they were put there by the five Pandava brothers. The stone pillars were of varying heights, from 2-5 feet, and full of ancient looking, beautiful basic shapes and carvings. More likely they were made by real kings rather than Pandava princes whose existence is doubtful. But here in Karnali, don’t you dare tell people that their myths are not real.

You may not be inclined to believe in all these stories of gods, kings, and hidden treasures. Until you visit the Kanaka Sundari temple, on a hilltop right in the middle of Sinja valley. The temple itself is unassuming, a crumbling mud structure full of ancient, neglected stone panes. The priest then told me that when they were digging to lay the foundations for a new, renovated temple, they found some old statues. Since everyone wanted them, the statues were taken to the local police station and locked up.

Curious, I walked to the police station and joined the queue of waiting people. “What a day this is! When devotees have to take their gods out of jail!” said one of the local women, as the policeman took a key out of his pocket and opened a big wooden box.

Out came five little statues, no more than a foot tall each. Two of them were broken, and three of them were almost whole: ancient Hindu deities Indra, Sachi, and Vishnu. I stared and started and stared at the intricate beauty of the statues, the delicate poses, the peaceful faces, the height of imagination and artistry.

In Kathmandu, they would have been prized in temples thronging with devotees. Anywhere else in the world, they would have been venerated in museums. But this is Karnali, and here they languish in a police station as the people lobby the government to build them a museum.

Glumly I walked to the bus station. I passed a village that was about two hours away from any buses, and was clearly built only for pedestrians. The houses were interlinked, to go from one end of the village to the other you had to walk up the courtyard of one, through the living room of another, and past the kitchen of another, and so on, ascending and descending bamboo ladders that stuck out at odd angles. Houses stood on top of one another, like terrace fields, and water from houses above flowed through canals that ran besides houses downstream. Later I was told this used to a fort, which was why the houses were so tightly packed together.

Soon I got to the bus stop and took a bus to the next town. People of Karnali who were going the same way didn’t accompany me. “The bus will take you there in an hour, and I can walk there in the same time. Why should I take the bus?” said one woman. “Beside, bus rides make me puke!”

On the bus I contemplated everything I had seen on this trip, and was hit by an aching sense of loss. Soon there will be roads all over the region, and children who grow up on buses will not have the same enthusiasm for walking that today’s women do. The village full of ladders, I wonder what concrete roads will do to it. It will be replaced by concrete, standalone buildings and people will not need to walk through each other’s homes, I assumed. The stone pillars will be moved aside and the ruins will be built over, and no one will think they are a magical connection to myths. Nobody will remember the Pandava princes any more, or make the effort to visit their gods at police stations. There will be televisions and cinemas that will air new songs, and people will stop making up their own. 

For a girl who had grown up in a city and had never known a place connected to her myths, never heard a song passed down through the generations, never seen jewellery going back hundreds of years, the whole trip was like a journey back in time, a search for roots.

This longing for unknown roots filled me completely: Hiraeth, a homesickness for a lost home, or a home that perhaps never was. I just wanted to close my eyes and stay right there. This place seemed incredibly precious, and the people of Karnali incredibly lucky.

I sighed, because I was romanticizing things as an outsider, and perhaps the people of Karnali prefer roads that will make their life easier, over this sentimental nonsense. I took the bus back to Surkhet, letting the people of Karnali walk and sing their way home.

Like light

Love
Is also both
Particles and waves

The Deep undercurrents
Of affection and loyalty
That make up your background
That goes very well With your
Life and world view

And the occasional burst of passion
That defy your logic and
That you struggle to make sense of...

(My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love forHeathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.
- Emily bronte)

courage

After pushing herself
up and out
Of the depths of abysses

She had stopped believing
That the gods had any purpose

It all seemed random
With thousands and thousands
victimised for no reason
by an indifferent universe

And the only way of getting out
was making your own effort
grabbing the bull by the horns

And she saw
the inshalla school of thought
as a sign of weakness
used by people
who did not want to make
their own decisions
or were not willing to
make efforts

an intense need
to control your life
to disdain anything else
that portends to
have agency over it

but then that is turning
a blind eye
to the cycles of time
to the waves of destiny
that flood the whole world
and not just you

a great courage she had built up
in turning destiny around
in her favour

but then a greater courage
lay ahead

the courage to accept
what will happen
the courage to submit
to things she cannot control

life is always
walking on
the edge of a sword

on one side
is the great cowardice
of ignorant submission
that degenerates into
Indolence and decay

on the other
is the need to hold
everything in your palms
spiralling into
anxiety and agitation

and the fine, fine balance of
doing your thing
keep doing your thing
but also accept
that what will happen
will happen


**
"Why is it, O Krishna,
that some men do no karma of their own
and yet get the results of bhagya?

It is true, O Arjuna
that some men get the results of bhagya
without doing ay karma of their own
but that is no excuse
for you to not do what you need to do"

Set sail!

A ship in a harbour is safe
But that is now what ships are built for,
they say

And now the ship has set sail

म घुम्दो मायाले

मौरी घुम्दो के सारले
म घुम्दो मायाले

- झल्का रया बुका

Smiling, because

You are on my mind

Enlightened mess

I wonder How
Someone so resourceful
Can be so messy

But Then maybe
Its the mess that Forces you
To seek out the resources...

Whose will

And i might think a dream
I Saw of you
Or hints the universe gave me
Of intimacy with you

Is the universe's way of telling me
That This will come true
That This is meant to be

I might be beguiled into thinking
My dream will come true

And So Will hundreds of others
Who feel the Same
About you

But There is only One you

How Then Can i trust my intuition

Watching the delusions
Of So many around me
Is How i learnt
To not trust Mine own

A rose is a rose by any other name,
Shakespeare Would say
But here it matters a lot
What to call my intuitions

I could call it a projection
Of my subconscious
And be rudely jolted
Out of my fantasy

Or I could call it
A Sign from the heavens
And live in delusions
And refuse to accept
The truth that is glaring

**

In the meantime
This so called delusional life
Has become the sweetest truth
That I have ever carved out
Unknowingly, and with love
And I know that I will love her
Without any expectations
But cherishing her shower
Of boundless love as mine

Making Do With logic

When What is required
Is things that scoff
At mundane rules

Of destiny etcetera

You could say There are
Law that govern us
And the laws of physic
Are absolute
And Everything
Has to obey these laws
Whether it wills to or not

You could say 

There are laws
In Human life
Planet and stars
No They don't rule us
They merely indicate
What is Going to happen
And help us prepare

The real laws and lawgivers
Are invisible
 

They are not gods
To make these laws at their will
In fact gods themselves
Have to live by these laws
 

The real lawgivers

Are the laws themselves
Which come from nature
Like the laws of physics

and so are unbendable

Where you are born

Who you see around you

What happens in your lifetime

These are the laws

They say geography is destiny

in modernspeak

But we knew it long ago

we called it karma

And she may wonder

if there is no way to escape it

And if so, what is the use of

thinking and acting

of feeling and getting impassioned

 

And yet some things do manage

to break the laws

The laws cannot conceive of water

And there it is

The laws may not conceive of us

thinking on our own

and getting out of 

the circle of destiny

but there we go

flaoting along

in a calm river
slow, dreamy
green, transparent, clear
stopping to chat
lingering to look
circling back to remember
trees, birds, flowers
cool, shaded